She crouched at the base of the ladder, touched her fingers to a dark smear on the tunnel’s brick wall. “Blood,” she whispered. “It’s here.”
The sound of blades clearing their leather wrist housings echoed through the narrow passageway. Tayla held her spiked blade in one hand and her stang in the other as they followed the trail of blood. She ignored the squishing noises beneath her feet, ignored the rats and the sound of moisture dripping down the walls. Her focus narrowed to take in only the sights, sounds, and smells that would lead her to her target. Her eyesight sharpened, her ears tamped down her internal noises and picked up the most delicate sounds, like those of the cockroaches skittering behind the walls.
Down here, she was the predator.
Tay lived for this. Lived for the high, the rush of adrenaline that coursed through her veins during the hunt.
Lived for this because hatred was all that kept her heart beating.
Shadows shifted inside a tunnel ahead, and the hairs on the back of Tay’s neck prickled. In front of her, Janet sank into a crouch. Tay flattened herself against the brick and eased next to the opening.
Heart pounding, she wheeled into the tunnel arch.
Three red eyes met hers. Two rows of sharp teeth flashed. The demon’s high-pitched screech blasted through her brain, and son of a bitch, the thing wasn’t a Cruentus.
“Croucher demon,” she shouted back to her partner, who cursed and surged next to her.
“What, you can’t find a house to terrorize, you ugly piece of shit?” In one smooth motion, Janet drew an air claw from her belt pouch and launched it.
The demon shrieked, clutched the throwing star buried deep in one eye, hatred burning in the remaining two. Tay worked her stang into a spin that would sever the Croucher’s head, but motion in her peripheral vision brought her around. Janet tumbled awkwardly through the air and landed in a crumpled heap. In the space where she’d stood, the Cruentus demon growled deep in its skeletal chest.
“Not. Nice.” Tay hurled her spiked blade backward even as she lunged forward with the stang. She didn’t need to look to know the spike had buried itself in the Croucher’s throat.
One down, one to go.
The gold razor edge of her stang found its target and sliced a thin line across the Cruentus’s stomach. The thing stumbled back, one hand covering its belly like it expected its guts to fall out. She spun, struck it in the pelvis with a roundhouse kick.
The creature slammed into an access ladder. Tay moved in, stang whirling. The Cruentus’s claws lashed out, catching Janet in the shoulder.
“Ow! Bastard.” Janet brought her favorite weapon, a hatchet, from beneath her jacket. The demon sidestepped her attack, and the blade landed only a glancing blow to its shin.
“Hey, asshole!” Tay charged, but she drew short with a cry. Her right leg tingled, the muscles turned to water. Her hand went numb, and her stang clattered to the ground just before her body landed in the slime.
Not again. Not now!
“Tayla!” Janet screamed as the demon’s thorny fingers closed around her throat.
Gnashing her teeth, Tay dragged herself toward the demon, which was shaking her partner like a terrier with a rat.
“Hey!” Tayla’s fingers closed around a jagged chunk of brick. “You disgusting sonofabitch, look at me.”
She hurled the brick with her good arm, and a sharp edge crunched into the back of its head. Black fluid spurted from the wound. Snarling, it released Janet and turned, its eyes little more than orange balls of rage.
“Whore,” it rasped. “Filthy human whore. I’ll feast on your organs, suck them out through your cunt while you scream.” It slipped its narrow tongue between its fangs and slurped obscenely at the air.
“Men,” she muttered, stretching for the stang she’d dropped. “Doesn’t matter what species, you always make everything about sex.”
Baring its teeth in a smile that wrinkled its blunt, hairless snout, it picked up Janet’s hatchet. “Not sex. Death.”
It swung. The sound, the dull thud of a blade sinking into flesh tore through Tayla like a werewolf’s claws. Janet’s head, nearly separated from her body by her own hatchet, lolled to one side, caught against her shoulder only by a strip of sinewy muscle and skin. Surprise flashed in Janet’s blue eyes, and then the cloudy mist of death settled in them.
“Janet! No!”
“No!”
Tayla’s eyes flew open. Terror swept through her in a series of quakes. Sweat dripped down her forehead and into her hair as she took in the hospital equipment, the darkened, cool room. She was safe.
No, not safe. After the Cruentus killed Janet, it had attacked her, landed her in some sort of facility run by demons. She’d been patched up. Bathed. And, oh, God.
She’d had sex with a demon.
Tayla swallowed bile and tried to keep her stomach from heaving. She needed to shower. And douche. Maybe sterilize her skin by burning it off.